Spearmaster campaign is frustrating.

[Kligan]

I've completed Survivor, Artificer and Rivulet campaigns and moved on to Spearmaster.

And boy is it a frustrating experience!

The world is as chaotic as Artificer's, but with SUBSTANTIALLY less mobility and firepower for the player.
Trying to avoid danger is pointless, because it's full of enemies wherever I go. But that's not what annoys me. Deaths before I could even react to it - do.

A jumping lizzard flies from over the edge of the screen and instantly kills me.
Another lizzard literally falls on my head from above the screen and instantly kills me.
Two king vultures camping me at both ends of a pipe on the same screen at chimney canopy with nowhere to go.
Another time I come out of a pipe to be greeted by three lizzards partying at the entrance. I instantly turn around to find two more lizzards camping the pipe back the way I came. Well, f*ck me, I guess.

On top of all the insanity that's going on while trying to get from point A to point B, feeding takes a lot of time (standing still to make spears) and is always dangerous. Having two spears at the same time is cool and all, but it doesn't really help that much when there's predators everywhere, not giving me enough time to try and safely deal with one before many more show up.

I'm not opposed to difficulty, but this just feels frustrating, as I said. The main thing that annoys me are static screens. They caused couple of rare deaths in previous campaigns, but here - not seeing what the hell is going on beyond the edge untill I come couple pixels away to transition the screen often results in risks or deaths.
And yes, I know there's a mod for camera scrolling... but I had to turn it off because it breaks some areas of the game.
Oh, and not having a pouch to store things... Moving colored pearls by carring them adds to the frustration.

I feel like the world was way overtuned for this campaign.
If at least I could make spears while on the move, that would've make things a bit more interesting.

[☼Arkonev☼]

Agreed

[Wanjerok]

Yeah. Randomness of enemy spawning and they behaviour can be really strange and kind of frustrating. I can understand your pain. SBCameraScrooll good mod, but have kind of issue with out of memory for game and then crash the game.
I spent 8-9 hour for this. But i am happy when i make it.

[Wanderer]

Make sure the setting that lets you see enemies on the map is there. Good alternative to scrolling.

[Kligan]

Originally posted by Wanderer:

Make sure the setting that lets you see enemies on the map is there. Good alternative to scrolling.

I have it on yes, but it only helps so much.

[Kligan]

Originally posted by Winterkalte:

Aren't spearmaster spawns about the same as hunter? But you get infinite spears and are able to passage (with pearls too, if you want).

Edit: I haven't got sm yet I have just heard second hand its about the same as hunter I don't actually know.

How do you passage with pearls when you can't swallow them?

[Honkiewithaboomstick]

LMAOOOOOOOOOO BRUH YOU HAVENT EVEN GOTTEN TO THE "BAD PART" OR HARD AREAS OF SPEARMASTER YET, IT GETS SO, SO, SO, SO, MUCH WORSE.

HOPE YOU LIKE CARRYING A PEARL IN YOUR HAND FOR 1/2 OF THE GAME AND I HOPE YOU LIKE SKY ISLANDS AND INTERATOR 0 GRAVITY MECHANICS


Honestly was my favorite cat, until you have to fukken transport a pearl across half the map and take it to the top of the worst area (sky islands).

I think I had to quit the cycle a total of 7 times because either I dropped it down a pit, a scav stole it, or a dead body of whatever I was fighting pushed it off.
I have 400+hrs in this game and consider myself pretty good at it. But even I eventually just gave up trying to get the ending and looked it up youtube lmao.
By far the worst campaign

[Honkiewithaboomstick]

Also I would reccomend AGAINST the sbc camera scroll mod, It's hard on your memory, crashes the game often due to memory leaks and has a high chance of corrupting your entire save and making you reinstall. I would get used to the vanilla cam

QOL mods I WOULD recommend however, to make this brutal game less unfair is Omnithrow, and the HP bar mod on the workshop.
It makes your foodpips double as an HP Bar and lets you mash keys to get out of predator grasps, making combat in this game much more fun and alot less frustrating.
No more being oneshot by scavver's spears either, Being bitten by a lizard takes 1-2 of your foodpips away, Spears do 2-4 and will make you stagger and trip occasionally Being hit/bit at 0 food pips kills you. Pretty simple system but it adds alot to the game and makes it alot less unfair/unforgiving. You can take about 3 or 4 spears until you die and somethings still do instakill you like being electrocuted by a centipede big enough or Miros birds/vulture. You can even survive some explosions but it will take almost ALL your health and have you tripping around alot as it injures you pretty bad.
It also pairs well with the Carnivore mod, that lets all slugcats eat meat, for obv reasons you can eat whatever attacks you and regain your hp you lost in the fight

I have 400+ hours in this game, played about 390 of those without the HP Bar mod and got pretty good at the combat, but after installing it its an absolute game changer and increases the amount of stuff you can hunt so much. You can kill red lizards and King vultures alot more often with this if you're good. And if you're not good at the combat it gives you ALOT more of a fighting chance against anything Made the game way more fun I would really try it out. Turns the combat from "Kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sometimes" to "Fun and fair"

If you tl:dr this and only take on thing from this its DOWNLOAD THE HP BAR MOD

[Kligan]

Originally posted by Winterkalte:

It's a remix option! "Passage with key items". Transfers pearls + quest items in shelters. Super cool. I always gave up on collecting them all before because it was too tedious but with this option it feels pretty good.

Oh, this whole time I thought it didn't work for pearls, for some reason... I could've save myself a lof of headache if I realized, lol! My Survivor campaign is like 130 cycles long because I was carrying pearls :D

Originally posted by Honkiewithaboomstick:

LMAOOOOOOOOOO BRUH YOU HAVENT EVEN GOTTEN TO THE "BAD PART" OR HARD AREAS OF SPEARMASTER YET, IT GETS SO, SO, SO, SO, MUCH WORSE.

Oh, I can't wait! :D

Originally posted by Honkiewithaboomstick:

Turns the combat from "Kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sometimes" to "Fun and fair"

I don't really want to alter the game that much...

But yeah, come to think of it... the reason I love Rain World so much is because it was not combat focused, and instead - being observant, avoid danger and survival.
Artificer's campaign was something new and exciting, because she had ineteresting mechanics and mobility.
But Spearmaster, I feel like, is just a regular Rain World, but now it sh*ts enemies everywhere and makes it combat-focused. Which is... not great.

[Kligan]

And I don't understand why, while playing as a Spearmaster, sometimes elite scavengers show up and start throwing explosive and electric spears at me!

I haven't even done anything to scavengers! I give them king vulture masks, give them spears and pearls...

And I have a mod "watch your aim" so that they won't throw spears at overseers if they risk hitting someone else.
Those elites come SPECIFICALLY for me for some reason.

[Walfas]

Spearmaster is probably the toughest of the Downpour slugcats, it's true. Artificer can be tough just because of the amount of spears being hurled at you constantly, but yes, Spearmaster. Try to rely less on your spear-making ability, since it takes a while to actually sprout one and usually that is what gets you killed. Every spear is precious, try not to fling them about all willy-nilly because then you have nothing to defend yourself for the 4-6 seconds it takes to spawn two more.

[Spark7979]

The only part I hated about spearmaster was having to haul a pearl through half the game. Let's give this guy the ability to dual wield spears, and then nullify said ability by making him hold a pearl the whole time! Great! It might be less annoying if your feeding spears emerged faster but no. I always held a spear in one hand and the pearl in the other, then when I saw an enemy, depending on what it was I either went straight for the nearest spear or the nearest rock. Still tedious though.

And that one area, the vents. Ugh what a horrible area. If you don't know the shortcut the distance you have to go is insane.

[CtenosaurOaxacana]

Spearmaster is a bit easier than Hunter, because although the creature spawns are about as abundant and aggressive in both campaigns, Spearmaster gets infinite weapons, but is physically weaker: slower running, less damage done with spears, can't carry heavier creatures as easily, etc. Bigger downside is that getting food pips is a bit more complex. Oh yeah, but a huge plus is, no limit on total # of cycles, aka no game time limit.

When you get to the point of having a pearl-carrying quest, it's not as difficult or long as others make it out. The route is mostly a horizontal line in the sky between regions:

1st route:
Five Pebbles > Exterior (Wall/Underhang) > Waterfront Facility (Precipice) > Looks to the Moon
2nd route:
LttM > Precipice > Underhang/Wall > Chimney Canopy > Sky Islands (Communications Array)

Also you can always put down the pearl temporarily to manifest more spears. It's rare you're going to want to go charging into a fight ever, anyway.

Lastly, if you really hate the idea of crossing some of these regions twice in a row,
you can always enable the 'key items passage' option in remix menu, and use a passage achieve to teleport back to another shelter on Exterior or Five Pebbles.

[kokkilokki]

Originally posted by Honkiewithaboomstick:

massive rage

YEP, SAY IT LOUDER for the people in the back :D I was so upset about this I've had an unstable rant about it 10 times.

They NEED to change this, because otherwise the Slugcat is excellent. The most common suggestion is:

Make it so that Spearmaster can put the pearl back to his diсkhole where the pearl was ripped off.

My best idea:

Have the pearl float and follow you around like Sofanthiel (Artificer's flying robot) does. If Five Pebbles's musical toybox pearl can do this, it would be fitting enough for Spearmaster's pearl.

[Kligan]

This is infuriating! I have a chieftain passage unlocked. Always at max rep with scavengers.
And yet they sometimes just randomly decide to off me for no reason.

Just now I walked out of my shelter, traveled across couple rooms. Come out of a pipe - there's a scavenger sitting in a tunnel. And he just decides to throw a spear in my face. For lulz, I guess... There were no overseers even.

What even is this gabage? Nothing like that ever happened in Survivor or Rivulet campaigns. Especially after I got chieftain.

Why do they randomly decide to kill Spearmaster sometimes?

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Kligan:

This is infuriating! I have a chieftain passage unlocked. Always at max rep with scavengers.
And yet they sometimes just randomly decide to off me for no reason.

Just now I walked out of my shelter, traveled across couple rooms. Come out of a pipe - there's a scavenger sitting in a tunnel. And he just decides to throw a spear in my face. For lulz, I guess... There were no overseers even.

What even is this gabage? Nothing like that ever happened in Survivor or Rivulet campaigns. Especially after I got chieftain.

Why do they randomly decide to kill Spearmaster sometimes?

Have you tried disabling the mod that changes their behaviour to see if it makes them stop? It could always be a bug with the DLC's own code, or worse somehow intended, but my first instinct would always be the random less tested code someone decided to add to try and alleviate one problem and possibly cause four others.

That said, the wiki does say "It is significantly harder to get an Elite Scavenger on your side than a regular Scavenger; they will often still try to attack the Slugcat even if the Slugcat head.png Slugcat has a high reputation with Scavengers." and scavs have individual grumpiness, so maybe you're just getting unlucky.